Many stories start with passionate leads who know exactly what they want; others utilize Bradley’s resources to flip the first page.
“I was probably one of the first people [to take the academic exploration program], and I took a test,” Annette Danek-Akey, chief supply chain officer of Barnes & Noble, said. “It was really the best.”
The career fit test gave Danek-Akey two options: iIndustrial engineer or accountant. Then, the program introduced her to professionals in the field along with professors who teach the subjects.
The career search led to a conversation with a Bradley professor who highlighted the field of industrial engineering to the business-minded freshman. After three hours of discussion, Danek-Akey was sold.
For Krishnanand Maillacheruvu, interim dean of the Caterpillar College of Engineering and Technology, this incident was by design.
“That industrial engineering background actually allows people to think very broadly and on a systems level … and all of that kind of started here on campus,” Maillacheruvu said. “It’s that community that we have here at Bradley. So, for example, I could go to Liberal Arts and Sciences and I’ll have, you know, 15 friends there or EHS or CFA. So we’re always continuously building these collaborative things.”
While Danek-Akey’s post-graduation doctorate path was purely engineering, eventually she found middle ground: a book publishing company called Penguin.
Danek-Akey’s love of books then sustained a 20-year career in mergers and acquisitions that grew the publishing company into the famous Penguin Random House.
Yet, her solution to one of its big problems would launch it above the rest.
“At some point, [our company] realized that, in the book industry in general, our return rate was 35 percent. So of all the books we shipped out, 35 percent came back,” Danek-Akey explained. “We talked to someone … and he said ‘you need to solve the root.’”
The combination of books and supply chains allowed Danek-Akey to call in her hero – author of the novelized supply chain story “The Goal”, Eliyahu Goldratt.
“So I got the chance to work with [Goldratt] from 2008 to about 2011, and if you want to know what we did, he wrote a book about it,” Danek-Akey recounted. “In this book, there is a concept right now called buffer management. People go to [this] inventory technique … but they hide it because it’s a competitive advantage.”
The advantage of the technique was immense enough that the return rate dropped significantly, and Penguin Random House’s supply chain is considered “world-class.”
True to her entrepreneurial spirit, Danek-Akey left the now-established publishing company for one that was on the path to decline: Barnes & Noble.
Despite rapid changes the supply chain enthusiast experienced over the course of her career, it was one principle that unified her experiences: Ikigai.
Originating in Japan, Ikigai encourages people to work in what they love, what the world needs, what they’re good at and what makes money simultaneously.
This philosophy is nothing new to Bradley. Executive and academic director of the Turner School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Mary Conway Dato-On highlighted the value of teaching students about Ikigai.
“Ikigai really overlaps with what we do around entrepreneurial mindsets and skill sets and how those inform whatever you want to do with your life,” Dato-On said. “It’s really important because you have to focus. So think about it: in this world, how do you focus? For me, Ikigai provides that.”
“I really thought that as an engineer … [Danek-Akey] was a great communicator,” Dato-On added. “She had an idea, but it wasn’t until she could communicate it that the organization learned to do it. That requires good communication skills, and sometimes, we don’t associate that very strongly with engineers.”
While the principles Danek-Akey presented were universal, as an industrial engineer, she gathered those like junior industrial engineering major Heberto Martinez to give career insight.
“She shared a little bit of her experience, how it’s always worth it to keep trying,” Martinez said. “I also really learned a lot about the books she found impactful and valuable, so I’ll try to get my hands on those and read those.”
Through recounting a transformative chapter in her life, Danek-Akey allowed the Braves to graze the library of industrial engineering and general life wisdom.
